


Life, or Something Like It

by Lannakitty



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Drama, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Gen, Humor, Revelations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-16
Updated: 2011-10-16
Packaged: 2017-10-24 17:56:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lannakitty/pseuds/Lannakitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will tries to deal with the events of the episode, Out of the Blue. Kate, Biggie and Henry tease him for his own good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life, or Something Like It

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://grav-ity.livejournal.com/profile)[**grav_ity**](http://grav-ity.livejournal.com/) for help with where I wanted it to go, and for letting me bounce some ideas off her. I don't think I ended up where I thought I would but I think it works anyway :D

  


Kate disappears for a few hours after they get home. He doesn't see her again before Magnus orders him to bed. He agrees to go only if she does. Magnus reluctantly agrees. Will is fairly certain that she'll not stay there and makes it a point to get up to catch her in the act. He sleeps through his alarm.

When he finally wakes up, it's because his phone is beeping insistently at him. He slaps it with an uncoordinated arm and gets the damn thing to stop beeping eventually. Something falls off his bedside table and rolls around on the floor.

Will checks his phone and sees that he's just missed a call from Abby. She's left a voice message. Something in his stomach twists at the thought of seeing her again, calling her. There is no rational reason for it, but it's there anyway. He once had a sex dream about an attractive, and married, colleague. This is much the same. He'd felt a nebulous feeling of shame, guilt and embarrassment that lasted for days in her presence. Will sits up in bed, the sheets falling to his waist. This is also much different. Magnus had shared the hallucination with him. The fantasy wasn't private.

Will looks around his room, and wonders if he feels so very off-center because of the contents of his fantasy world, because his fantasy was witnessed, or because he's just had yet another near-death experience. Maybe it's all three. Will swings his feet out of bed and yelps as he stands on something.

He picks up a little metal top. This isn't his. Belatedly, he realizes this is what must have fallen off his side table. He sets it down and goes about getting dressed. The top comes with him to breakfast.

Druitt is there. He can tell before he's entered the kitchen because Magnus' body language is very specific when Druitt is in her home. He flashes back to their hallucinated conversation in the perfect world.

Which...wasn't so perfect. As a matter of fact, it was a pretty sucky world of bliss. For both of them. Will wondered about that, had wondered in the quiet moments during the plane ride home. It was supposed to be blissful and perfect, so what hadn't it been?

Why hadn't Henry been there as his techie neighbor? "Henry" had been Magnus' cat, which was all kinds of wrong. Hell, why were his parents off-screen as it were? Why hadn't Kate been there? Biggie? Did he really want 2.5 kids and a white picket fence without his friends? He thought perhaps he understood why Magnus wished for a simpler life, one without everyone running to her, needing her to fix it all now, now, now! But she'd been divorced from Druitt, not happily married. Her father hadn't been there, neither had Watson, Tesla or Declan. Why no Ashley at all?

It had been quiet and peaceful, and it should have been perfect, or so they'd said...so why did it make him feel uneasy?

Druitt is sipping coffee. Helen has tea. Will heads for the tea, a gesture of solidarity maybe. As unsettling as the thought of calling Abby is, he can't imagine what Magnus must be feeling with Druitt standing right there.

["Bwaaaaaaaaam!"](http://inception.davepedu.com/)

Will nearly drops his cup. There is a chorus of sighs from the Victorians. Kate is grinning. Henry and Biggie are practically giggling into their scrambled eggs.

"What?" He asked.

"Inception!" Kate says, with a little hand gesture.

On cue, Biggie and Henry chime in with "Bwaaaam!"

Magnus rolls her eyes. "They've been doing that to me all morning." She holds up a little metal top. "Apparently this is significant."

Will pulls out the matching one, and eyes the grinning group at the table. He's pretty sure he knows where Kate disappeared to, and who stole into his room and left the gift. They're smiling at him, but he can see they're also anxiously awaiting his reaction. With as grave an expression as he can muster, he sets the top spinning on the surface of the table. It falls after a long moment.

"Huh. Guess I'm stuck with you. Pass the eggs." The subtle tension passes and animated chatter begins once more. He salutes Magnus with his mug and sits between a werewolf and a sasquatch to eat breakfast.

Afterwards, he still hasn't returned Abby's call, and she's left a second message. He hasn't listened to either and he feels vaguely guilty about it.

Druitt has offered to take Magnus directly to New Mexico. He's far more quiet around her than he has been in recent months, almost tentative. He speaks softly and his gestures are small and elegant. Will wonders if this is how he was before he became the Ripper. Gentle. Calm. Ashley had moments like this, at home when her guard was down around family, when she was handling her mother. Will knows Helen saw it. He wonders if she can see the root of the cause now. Druitt is afraid. Perhaps he doesn't even know why. The two of them are at an edge of something. In the dream world, Helen said she hated him. In reality, the situation is still much more complex. He's fighting for her in his own way. Will wonders if it's too late.

He's stuck with paperwork again. The word from New Mexico is...Interesting. Like the curse. Their network is mobilizing, to help, to protect. There is a metric fuckton of paperwork. Kate finds him late in the evening the next day. Magnus left with Druitt, Henry and a case of electronics. He's left at home this time, waiting new arrivals, waiting for word. He expects both shortly, but he still hates waiting. Will presses the heels of his hands against his eyes and the oncoming headache.

"Hey."

He doesn't move his hands. "Hi, Kate."

He hears her slouch into the seat across his desk. She can slouch into anything and at least give the appearance of being comfy. Will knows the chair currently across from his desk is anything but. It's an impressive, almost abnormal skill. Or maybe just feline. He looks up and sure enough, she's got one leg draped over the hard arm of the chair, elbow resting on the opposite side like it's some kind of ergonomic dream. She's playing with one of the bracelets from her infinite collection.

"Need something?" he asks.

"Nah. Just waiting, ya know?" For all her relaxation, she's tense, ready, anxious.

He sighs in agreement. "Yeah."

They sit in silence for a bit, and Will turns back to his paperwork. Will doesn't ask since Kate won't help. He's not even sure she has an office, and if she does, he's pretty sure it's in the same state of chaos as her room, but Kate's paperwork is always in on time. It's a little infuriating. Will's finished signing some hard copy emergency requisition forms and his phone rings. He lets it ring.

Will can practically feel Kate's eyebrow arch.

He looks up to give her a quelling glare and yep, there it is. He wonders what happened to his life, that the mostly-former-thief is judging him. "It's complicated."

"You've been away almost a week when it was supposed to be a couple days."

Will focuses on his paper and ignores his phone.

Kate picks it up. There is no way anyone claiming to be a normal human should be that fast. "William Zimmerman's office, department of tardy paperwork and deep brooding. How might I direct your call?"

Will lets his head fall to the desk, face first. He holds out a hand for his phone. He knows better than to grab for it. She'll just run and he's not up to chasing. He resigns himself to the one-sided conversation he knows is coming.

"Yeah, its exactly like that. Yep. Totally brooding. Psychic worms.... Eh. It'd give it about a six on the usual Mortal Peril scale for this place. Granted that would have been something like a nine before a signed on, so, you know. Your mileage may vary."

Finally the phone is dropped into his hand. He sighs. "Hi."

"Rough week?" Abby asks. She doesn't sound angry, so there's that. He should thank Kate later.

"The venom of a psychic annelid the size of a school bus did a number on me and Magnus." He sighs again. "I don't want to talk about it yet."

"That bad, huh."

"Worse."

"Yikes."

The silence is awkward and long, but he's not sure how to fill it. He doesn't know what he feels about the vision, and he can't talk about this with her. Not now, maybe not ever. He's left with a vaguely uncomfortable, guilty sensation in the pit of his stomach.

"Look, why don't you take some time to get your head back on," Abby suggests. He can hear her forcing the cheer, and he knows that she knows he can hear it. "Then give me a call."

"Thanks."

"Bye, Will."

He thumbs the call end button and lets the phone fall out of his fingers to the desk. He didn't break up with her, but he feels like he's just ended a marriage.

"Regretting leaving bliss?" she asks.

"It wasn't bliss," he retorts, and it feels right to say that. Frowning in thought he repeats his statement. "It wasn't."

"Really? We knew the venom was keeping you guys calm for the most part and we knew you were having some kind of dream. Magnus' version of things sounded pretty Stepford." She shrugs a shoulder. "We all figured it looked like a pretty blissful state from the outside. We were worried we'd have to really up the drugs to get you guys back."

"It wasn't though," Will said, sitting back. "I mean, it was very peaceful and there were some things that," he trailed off, thinking. "I don't know, Kate. There were some good parts to it, things I guess I want in life. But the rest?" he shook his head. "There was too much missing."

"You sound surprised."

"I think I am," he said. "I've been focusing on it as this perfect, blissful dream world because it was literally the white picket fence situation. And it's been bothering me, because I kept thinking it was my vision of perfect, but it really wasn't."

She tilted her head to the side, silently inviting explanation.

"So my parents for example. They were alive but they weren't really there. If I was married and expecting a kid, I know my mother would have practically moved in to help us. In my perfect would, we wouldn't have lived far away from them. I would have had friends in town if not the nieghborhood."

He sat back in his seat. "It's only weird when I look at it now. There wasn't anyone else and I never really questioned that. Being isolated with just Abby? That's...that's not me anymore." He felt his lips quirking slightly. "I like the extended family I have here. I'm done being alone."

"So ya missed me, huh?" she asked, eyes dancing merrily.

Will chuckles. "You know, I did. You were a resounding absence in my Stepford dream-life," he replied with mock seriousness before breaking into a smile again.

"I've been feeling really...weird about this, thinking it was somehow my idea of perfection, and it really wasn't. It wasn't for either of us. Which is probably good, since we noticed before you guys had to do some really extreme things with the drugs," he says, smiling a little.

"So why are you avoiding talking to the girlfriend."

"Well the whole married and pregnant thing is kinda-" he let that hang out there.

"Yeah," she allows. "Would not want to have that conversation myself."

"I know, and it's not like those thoughts haven't crossed my mind - I'm dating her so they have. But we haven't discussed them."

"Yeah, but that's an epic level of awkward."

Will laughs at her dry delivery but he can also hear the understanding in her voice. He folds his hands, matching her slouch in his chair, and reflecting on the dreamworld. The realization that it wasn't perfect was an epiphany. It didn't erase all the ill feelings in his gut but it did much to alleviate his feelings of doubt. Maybe finally he could let got of the dreamworld, let it fade into memory like others.

"Well, my work here is done," Kate says, rising to her feet and brushing her hands together. She marches jauntily towards the door.

"Kate."

She paused at the door.

"Thanks."

Winking, Kate leaves him with his thoughts. He pokes at his paperwork, letting time pass, letting the grip of the dreamworld fade. In the light of this new revelation, it retreats like a shadow. He suspects it will still haunt him faintly but he's gained a measure of control. He finally sets aside the stacks of forms that will be mailed out in the morning and so the great machine of their emergency response can function when Magnus returns.

Picking up the phone, Will hits Abby's number.

"Hey," she greets.

"Got my head on straight." He wheels his chair around the desk, using the other chair as a footrest. "Man I have had a week."

Abby laughs lightly on the other end. "Sounds like. Wanna talk?"

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah I kinda do."

His life isn't perfect or blissful and recently it's been anything but peaceful - but it's _his_ and he wouldn't trade it for all the white picket fences in the world.

~fin  



End file.
